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Friday, April 14, 2017

MSFT Blocks Processors

The time has finally come: Microsoft is dropping the banhammer on mixing modern processors with classic Windows operating systems.

Users are reporting their Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs with Kaby Lake and Ryzen processors are being blocked from receiving updates, according to Ars Technica and Tech Report.

That means all updates, including security updates, will be unavailable on PCs with brand new hardware running the two older operating systems. The first hints of this were revealed in March, when a Microsoft support page appeared detailing the policy of blocking updates for Kaby Lake and Ryzen-toting PCs using Windows 7 or 8.1.

Microsoft’s stance on PCs running a classic Windows build with newer processors actually goes back to January 2016. At that time, Microsoft announced a plan to ease the transition to Windows 10 for enterprises by certifying some Skylake processors to run Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 for a limited time. The company also added that Intel’s Kaby Lake, Qualcomm’s 8996 Snapdragon processsors, and what we now call AMD Ryzen would all require Windows 10.